Sired's Map project - Updated- 4/16 - files available see first post

4 gigs!?  Holy cow.  Yeah, you must have a lot of layers going on.  Still, 4 gigs?!?!  Water looks cool, as does the kamikaze and convoy icons!  I saw a map that was for a different game completely that was a “vintage” style like what you’re going after.  I thought it looked really cool.  Looking forward to seeing your finished product.

looks good. 4 gigs is nothing for a map this size.

A few things I’d recommend:

1. standardize the placement of the convoy and kamikaze icons  top right and bottom right in the sea zones maybe with a rounded corner rectangle around them (hairline black would work)

2. change the IPC number in the circle from black to white so it stands out better from a distance

3. bold or change the font of the sea zone numbers as the thins of the font will disappear when printed

4. lastly, increase the kerning of the place names so they read easier from a distance

all in all a nice job, like the colour palette you chose.

Nice to see big progress on your map sired! Interesting old pirate look and feel to the map.

I really like the way the convoy and kamikaze symbols turned out, but I would suggest to play around with brighter colors for the territory names and income values to increase contrast for easy reading

Looking forward to the next update!

We printed up your older version, its fun to customize and I appreciate all your efforts.

Palau Island seems a bit too large.

@robert:

looks good. 4 gigs is nothing for a map this size.

I’d say it is.  I just finished a map that is about 30% larger than OOB with over 1000 layers and the .psd file is 1.2 gigs.  I was not using 32-bit color so maybe that’s the difference.  :?

@siredblood:

I’ll have a zoomed out shot later today.

I’m looking forward to see the effects of your nice artwork on a larger scale.

@siredblood:

The layer FX eats up the file size….

Ok, makes sense.  On mine, In order to keep file size down and number of layers, I did a lot of it in separate stand-alone projects, even much of the text.  And then when I was happy with something, I would merge the layers and import the JPEG into the map project.  If I wanted to edit, say some text, I would edit the separate text project file, merge layers, and import again.  So much of the FX stuff was done outside of the actual map project.  One thing that I found also is to try and keep text in the main map file to a minimum as it slows things down.  Raserize your text whenever practical.  Looking forward to seeing your finished product.

I like the duller or not so bright territory colors you have so far. It makes things stand out a bit but not bold. You may have to make the water slightly bluer.  Maybe a bit to many brown colors ?
Still awesome work !

I like it. Its so much different at least for me. Did you try white or black borders for sea zones I assume. Good luck and cant wait to see more pics.

This is going to look amazing  :-)

This looks fantastic! I love that it’s so far from OOB. That’s probably not to everyone’s taste, though, but I sure like it!

Looking at it, I think I’d prefer the territories without colours, just to really distinguish this from the OOB map, and to cement the old-timey war map feel.

Hat’s off to you, sired. Great work! True artistry.